Website designers

Usability and Accessibility

If you were at the Usability Professionals Association Conference in Portland June 8-12, I wonder if you noticed what I noticed: Even though usability is the first step toward accessibility, usability professionals in general seem to know less than you might think they should about making content accessible. Many will admit that.

Some even came away from this year’s conference wishing that they could have learned more. As one participant mentioned, “What I overwhelmingly heard was that people were wanting more accessibility info and were disappointed in what they got.”

In looking into what it would take to obtain better presentations, workshops, and tutorials on accessibility for this conference, I learned one obstacle to getting more and better presentations on accessibility is a lack of reviewers who are well-versed in the topic. In other words, even if many excellent proposals for sessions dealing with accessibility come in, the conference organizers wouldn’t have a team of reviewers available to assess them.

If you are also a member of the UPA, this is where you come in. Complete this survey to volunteer to review proposals for UPA 2010 in Munich. The survey gives you an idea of the time requirement and time frame involved. On the question that asks about your background and interests, be sure to include “accessibility” in your answer.

It is a federal requirement that certain websites comply with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).  The purpose is to ensure that anybody, regardless of physical handicap can read, see, and/or listen to the content on your website.

As with many things, complying with Section 508 of the ADA does require additional work.  But, the good news is that what you do to help persons with disabilities read and understand the content on your website also helps search engine spiders read, understand, cache, and index the content on your website.  This is a good thing.

Indeed, the more pages of information that search engines, like Google, index the more likely your site will rank on the search engine results pages (SERP) when a potential website visitor or customer “Googles” your key words.

So, do yourself a favor, and at the same time help persons with disabilities better read, understand, and listen to the content on your website.  Make your site Section 508 Compliant for Accessibility.

For more information about Section 508 compliance see the following websites:

• GSA BuyAccessible Wizard – The BuyAccessible Wizard is a tool to facilitate compliance with the requirements of Section 508.
• Section 508 – The Road to Accessibility explaining the 508 law, training, coordinators, accessibility forum, and events.
• United States Access Board – A federal agency committed to accessible design with links to the board, guidelines & standards, research, training, publications, and enforcement.
• Section 508 (Law) – United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Workforce Investment Act of 1998
• WebAIM – Web Accessibility in Mind, expanding the web’s potential for people with disabilities, with links to products, services, articles, resources, community, and training.
• WCAG 1.0 – Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) recommendation.
• Web Content Accessibility Validator – Designed to identify errors in your content related to Section 508 standards and/or WCAG guidelines.

Free Section 508 Compliance Validator Tool

Test your site for accessibility and 508 compliance

The web is a double-edged sword. What goes around, comes around. People can say great things about you and your website, link to your website, and help promote you and your services. However, disgruntled employees, unhappy clients, and crazy people can just as easily, but with probably more vigor, blast you online as well.

Indeed, if your blog has the word “sucks” in the title, you will immediately get spidered and ranked in other “sucks” websites. Unfortunately, even the best companies with the best customer service and attention to detail has unhappy clients. Sometimes, clients just can’t be pleased. Sometimes, you did make a mistake or one of your employees made a mistake, but whatever you do or did to try to rectify the error just didn’t sit well with the customer. So, they went online and bad-mouthed you.

Somewhere, some statistician made a claim to the effect that a happy client may tell one or two close friends about their experience with you.  But, an unhappy client will broadcast their dissatisfaction to 25 strangers.  According to the 80/20 principle, 20% of your clients will cause you 80% of your grief.  So, it may behoove you to go out of your way to plug holes before they leak.

Is there anything you can do about online complaints? Yes. Is there some kind of web authority that will fix it for you or stop the bad guys from doing it? No. What about slander and libel laws? Well, what about freedom of speech and expression laws, is their response.

The best thing you can do is “own the first page of Google.” How do you do that, you ask? A few ways:

1. Ensure that you optimize your site for your company name
2. Register the domain name, “your-company-sucks.com” replacing your company name
3. Create sub-domains like blog.yourcompany.com, wiki.yourcompany.com
4. Create profiles on social networking sites in the name of your company
5. Create hosted blogs at yourcompany.wordpress.com and yourcompany.blogspot.com
6. Create profiles on social bookmarking sites
7. Work to search engine optimize all of your subdomains and network of blogs

What else can you do to help suppress unflattering comments and derogatory content that relates to your company?

1. Fix your system so that you don’t make future customers unhappy
2. Try to make amends with the people (customers or employees) who are unhappy
3. Ask the webmaster of the website with hate mail and badmouth comments to remove it
4. Contact an attorney and demand untrue, slanderous, or libelous content to be removed
5. Hire a search engine optimization (SEO) consultant to help you suppress bad comments

Without a doubt, the first and most important step towards optimizing your website on Google is to identify the most important keyword phrases that will fulfill your overall marketing strategy.

The ultimate goal is to determine the single keyword phrase (KwP), consisting of three to five words, that will both lead prospective customers to your website and satisfy their search curiosity.  Most important, is that we use plain language, the words and semantics that our targeted customer uses to describe us or what we do.  It is very important to recognize and distinguish our internal language from that of our potential client.

My favorite example, that I used again and again, is that of the person who labels herself a “certified automotive technician,” when her would-be client only know her as their local Volvo mechanic.  Replace the word, “local” with your city or region and Volvo with the type or class of vehicle that you need repair.  You see, just as all politics are local, so are mechanics.  Few people want to pay for a California mechanic who specializes in diesel trucks to fly out to Washington DC to work on your hybrid.  You need a local mechanic who specializes in the type of vehicle that you have.

The reason this exercise is so crucial is that everything you do with regard to search engine optimization (SEO) must focus on this keyword phrase (KwP).  Your KwP must be the first words in the title tag of your home page.  It must be in one of the links on your primary navigation bar. It must appear as one of your headers.  It should be the title of your blog.  You should have a photo, along with an alt and title tag, named after your KwP.  Ideally, you would also have a directory and file name named after your KwP.  Finally, when people link naturally to your website, or digg your website, or you comment on other blogs, it is crucial to use your KwP as part of the anchor text.

When you combine all of your forces with laser-like precision, you will see not only a dramatic improvement in your website traffic but also an increase in your conversion rate, which ultimately delivers more business and higher profit margins.

Ranking high on Google involves a Holy Trinity of activities, namely;

1. Contributing frequent and relevant content focused on a few keyword phrases (KwP)
2. Utilizing Section 508 Compliant methods for web accessibility according to ADA
3. Developing natural inbound links from credible sites using your KwP as anchor text

More importantly, however, is that you obsess over these three activities.  That is why I call it Search Engine Obsession (SEO) rather than Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  Every single day, you need to invest time on your website.  It could be as little as 10-15 minutes or as much as a couple hours.

What can you do in 10-15 minutes?  You can find other websites or blogs that relate to your industry or your interests and comment on that blog entry.  Within the blog entry, you can reference an article or page on your website if you think it will be helpful to that blog’s readers or will further the usefulness of that blog article.  In addition, many blog comment forms allow you to enter your name and URL.  Once you post your comment, your name is clickable and it targets your URL.  Instead of putting in your name, perhaps should enter your title.  This way, you anchor text within that link is more relevant.

For example, there is a site related to a web development platform called Ruby on Rails.  Within this site, there is a blog that discusses RoR techniques, plug-ins, widgets, etc.  At the botom of that blog entry are reader’s comments and an invitation for new comments.  This is how I would complete the form:

If you can identify one relatively high ranking blog every day and make a useful, meaningful, relevant comment on that blog entry then you can add one new inbound link every day.  This very useful exercise should take no more than about 10-15 minutes out of your day and will ultimately amount to a very solid PageRank (PR) factor according to Google.

So, keep on obsessing.

Google and Adobe working together

Adobe has announced the company is teaming up with Google to improve search results of Flash intensive Web sites, which were previously not able to be indexed by Google and other search engines. Adobe is providing optimized Flash Player technology to Google to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines. Now, if Adobe and Apple can just work together so that the iPhone can read Flash then we can finally inch closer to an SEO and iPhone friendly Flash site.

1. Use the keywords that your clients would use to Google, “somebody like you, if they didn’t know who you were.”
2. Ensure that every page of your website has a unique TITLE tag and that you put your most valuable keyword phrase at the beginning of that TITLE tag
3. SUBMIT your URL to Google and Yahoo
4. Ensure that every page has a single H1 Header tag that concisely describes the contents of your web page, and make sure you include the keywords that your clients would most likely use to Google…
5. Install a WordPress blog on your website and ensure that you make maximum effective use of SEO plug-ins, category names that contain your keyword phrases, a blog roll that goes out and comes back into your website, and post slugs (pretty permalinks). Most importantly, write regular blog entries and ensure that you put your most valuable keyword phrases in the Title or Subject of the blog article.
6. Make sure that your folder names, directory path, file names, and images names all contain your most valuable keyword phrases.
7. Ensure that you use images on your website and that you describe these images, preferably using your keyword phrases, in both the ALT and TITLE tags for that image.
8. Create online social and professional networking profiles and be sure to list your website and blog in those profiles.
9. Read and comment on other blogs and be sure to enter the URL of your website in the field for that blog comment. This helps increase your number of inbound links.
10. Check your SEO progress once a week and take note of your progress, your deficiencies, and their recommendations.

If you are a bootstrapping entrepreneur who doesn’t have a lot of money or time but needs to get some things done to:

• Catapult your website into the mainstream
• Ignite your search engine optimization
• Empower yourself to market your own website,

You need a recipe or formula for making the most cost effective use of your valuable time and resources. These are the top 5 things I would recommend you do on a zero marketing budget and 30 minutes per day:

1. 10 minutes – Google topics of interest, discover an article or blog entry, write a brief but thoughtful response to that blog and be sure to mention your name, URL, and company in the appropriate comment fields
2. 15 minutes – Compose a brief but thoughtful and useful tip of the day that you can give your prospective clients so that they could be a little bit more informed, inspired, and effective in what they do.
3. 5 minutes – Bookmark one of your blog entries on the one of about 50 social bookmarking websites that abound, such as Digg, Technorati, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, etc. and in your remaining minute or two, e-mail one of your friends, family members, or colleagues and ask them to do the same.

What is the difference between search engine optimization (SEO) and Section 508 compliance for computer accessibility?

Not much! At least, not when it comes to on page elements of your web optimization.

If you run a government (.gov, .mil) website and/or have a requirement to comply with OMB Section 508 for computer accessibility then whom do you need to contact or study to ensure compliance? SEO gurus are who you need to reach out to.

A significant element to proactive search engine optimization is to take the necessary steps to ensure than spiders, crawlers, and major search engines can read everything on your website, including photos, Flash files, and PDFs. Well, guess what … the same rules that apply for Section 508 compliance also work for top-notch search engine optimization.

If you are Section 508 compliant, likely, your website has already been optimized for search engines. Likewise, if you are looking for a great search engine optimization guru, then start looking for a Section 508 compliance guru. You will improve the SEO effectiveness of your website, while at the same time, help web visitors with visual disabilities see your website more effectively.

WASHINGTON, DC – Web Design

Own the first page of Google

Social media profiles are the best ways to accomplish three crucial things in online marketing:

1. Create inbound links to your website
2. Own the first page of Google
3. Reputation management

How to create inbound links

For those of you who don’t know, one of the most important ways to rank on the first page of Google is to have inbound links.  Indeed, third party websites that have a link from their website to yours is one of THE most important factors that Google weights when it tries to decide who should be on the first page, second page and subsequent pages when a consumer Googles a particular phrase.

You can get inbound links three ways:

1. Create content so compelling that people want to link to you
2. Ask webmasters to link to you
3. Link to yourself from your social media site

Own the first page of Google

By creating profiles on social media sites and using your brand name as part of the screen name, you are able to leverage the reputation of these social media sites to fill up the entire page of Google when somebody Googles your name or company.  By doing that, you can dominate and own the first page of Google.

Reputation management

It doesn’t matter how great is your product or customer service, somebody will always find fault in what you do.  When a customer gets disgruntled, the first thing they’ll do is go to some consumer bitch site and bitch about you.  Before you know it, that bitch site ranks on the first page of Google when somebody Google’s your name.  How do you stop it?  By creating accounts on social networking profiles.  This allows you to control your reputation and bury derogatory statements on at least the second or third page of Google.

Social networking profile sites

Fortunately, DandyID maintains a list of just about every possible social networking site in existence.  Go there and create as many profiles as you possibly can.  Soon, you will dominate the first page of Google when somebody Googles your name.